Caro doctor's office specializing in house calls expands to Genesee County

GENESEE COUNTY, MI – It all started with a conversation Tom Plamondon had with a friend who happens to work as a physical therapist and mentioned seeing an increased need for health-care professionals to make house calls.

“I was in the position to start a new business so I took his idea and did some marketing and just asked people would you use this service and everybody said yes,” said Plamondon, a physician’s assistant and co-owner of Northview Medical House Calls in Caro.

The family-owned and operated practice opened a little more than a year ago and is already expanding into Genesee, Lapeer, Midland and Isabella counties, having found success serving Tuscola, Huron and Sanilac counties.

The practice hasn’t established a physical location in Flint yet, but Plamondon said they will be working to build a patient base before moving into an actual office.

Its central office is located in Caro, but the medical staff is mostly on the road, visiting 10 to 15 patients a day.

“Seventy percent of the people we see are over 70 years old,” said Plamondon, who opened the practice with co-owner Dr. Julie Sawade.

More than half of those patients live in assisted living or some kind of adult foster care facility, he said.

The remaining patients are individuals that are unable to leave their home for one reason or another, Plamondon said.

“They have difficulty getting out of the home easily, it’s a taxing effort and what happens is that, because it is a challenge, they wait until whatever condition they have worsens and they end up in the hospital,” he said. “Our service is for people who have a challenging time getting to the doctor.”

Technology has also allowed for more mobility, with computers becoming portable and cell phones.

“We can take things into homes,” Plamondon. “Our whole office is computerized, and then, secondly, ultrasound and X-ray machines can fit through the front door.”

The population of people who are 60 years or older in Genesee County was about 110,000 in 2009 and has grown by 20 percent in the last 10 years, said Kathryn Boles, executive director for the Valley Area Agency on Aging.

The organization is one of 16 area agencies on aging in Michigan and serves as an advocacy group for elderly and disabled adults in Genesee, Lapeer and Shiawassee counties.

“I think we are going back to those golden days where physicians would go to the patient’s home,” Boles said.

Physicians want to keep their client loads high and are starting to be more flexible in serving patients who are frail and unable to make those doctor’s appointments, she said.

“I do see that as something that will come back around again,” she said. “And I do think that is wonderful. We do have a lot of home bound people who are unable to get to doctor’s offices either because they are too frail or lack of transportation or lack of support. There are so many things that can impede someone from getting to the doctor’s office.”